Here's How U.S. Intelligence Screwed Up Its Chance To Stop The Boston Bombers

Did US law enforcement agencies miss a chance to prevent the
Boston Marathon bombings?
That’s a question lawmakers are asking in the wake of further
revelations regarding what the FBI and CIA knew about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder
bombing suspect killed last week in a shootout with police, and
when they knew it.

In particular, some US legislators want to know why Mr. Tsarnaev
wasn’t questioned or otherwise investigated after he came back
from a six-month journey to Russia in 2012. It now appears that prior
to the trip Russian intelligence told both the FBI and CIA that
Moscow suspected Tsarnaev was a
follower of radical Islam. His name was added to a US watch list
as a precaution. But US officials took no further action
following his return.

US officials themselves caution against a rush to judgment.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a conference
Thursday that Americans should not “hyperventilate” before all
the facts are in.

“The rules were abided by, as best as I can tell at this point.
The dots were connected,” he said during a public address to a
Washington convention on
intelligence.

According to an account provided to the Associated Press by US
officials, Russia’s internal intelligence service conveyed a
message about Tsarnaev to the FBI on March 4, 2011. The Russians
said that Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam and had
changed drastically during the past year. They asked whether
American intelligence had any further information on him.

The FBI then opened an inquiry into Tsarnaev’s activities.
Because of this, his name was added to a Department of Homeland
Security watch list used to screen people at airports and
other border checkpoints: the Treasury Enforcement Communications
System, or TECS.

FBI agents found nothing on Tsarnaev in their existing files.
They investigated whether he had visited online sites promoting
radical Islam. Eventually they interviewed Tsarnaev and his
family members. They found nothing connecting him to terrorism
and asked Russia for more detail. When none was forthcoming the
FBI closed the review in June 2011, according to the AP account.

Then in September 2011, the Russians contacted the CIA with the
same questions. They gave the US foreign intelligence service two
possible birthdays, two ways his name might be spelled, and a
look at how his name looked in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

In January 2012, Tsarnaev traveled to Russia. Just prior to his
departure, the TECS database generated an alert due to his flight
reservation, according to AP. That alert was shared with customs
officers. But by then the FBI probe into his activities had
closed. Plus, when the airline submitted his name for screening,
his name was misspelled, so at that time no further alerts were
issued.

Tsarnaev returned to the US in July. His name on the flight
reservation generated another TECS alert that was shared with
Customs. But he was allowed to pass without questioning because
at that point the FBI had not found any reason to be suspicious
of his activities.

The bottom line appears to be this: Homeland Security was aware
of Tsarnaev’s travels, due to TECS alerts. But the FBI and CIA
really were not. His name had not set off an alert from the TIDE
watch list due to different spellings.

Upon his return to America Tsarnaev began to engage in suspicious
activities, Senator Graham said on Thursday. But no alarm bells
went off.

“The suspected radical Islamist, the person we got warning
letters about, is openly on the Internet for months talking about
killing Americans and engaging in radical jihad against the
United States, and we were
unable to connect the dots and pick that up,” Graham told
reporters. “The rest is history.”

But DNI Clapper in his Thursday address to the C4ISR Journal
Conference pointed out that just being in a database is not by
itself indicative of “current nefarious behavior.” US agencies
repeatedly asked Russia for more intelligence on Tsarnaev’s
activities, and received none. At the time the FBI would have had
no reason to reopen an investigation it considered closed.

And it is not as if US intelligence has only a few dozen, or even
a few hundred, suspicious people to track. The US government’s
TIDE list of suspected terrorists has about three-quarter of a
million names. Nor is the list particularly discriminating – it
includes everything from the name of at least one 2-year-old to a
record for Ford Motor Company, according to
security expert Marcy Wheeler’s Empty Wheel blog.

“This is the problem with over-collection of data: it adds a
bunch more hay to the haystack for the time you want to start
looking for a needle,” writes Ms. Wheeler.

And it is not as if the FBI is supposed to tromp on civil
liberties in its rush to find that needle. US agencies face tight
restrictions that govern their investigations of terror suspects
on US soil, writes former FBI counterterror agent David Gomezin Foreign Policy Magazine.

To do more than it did, the FBI would have needed to have
reasonable suspicion that Tsarnaev was breaking the law or
presented a documentable threat to national security, according
to Mr. Gomez. That’s meant to protect US citizens from overly
intrusive government interference.

“The FBI did not bungle the Tamerlan inquiry. It followed the
law,” writes Gomez.